


High Council

by wrongfun (scumtrout)



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Drugs, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 11:45:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2771804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scumtrout/pseuds/wrongfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tarrlok is injured during a Task Force raid, Korra walks in on him before the painkillers have finished wearing off, h/c does not ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	High Council

Korra's sweat has cooled off, and her armour is pinching under her armpits. She wants to go home and drink broth and fall asleep on Naga. She doesn't want to be stuck in a crappy little medical clinic in the early hours of the morning, running an errand for someone she doesn't even like.

Yet here she is.

She stands in the clinic's foyer and tosses a set of keys up and down in her left hand. The keys belong to Tarrlok, as far as she knows. She's seen them on his desk before, though he usually keeps them in his pocket. He must've dropped the keys during the night's raid.

It was a pretty uneventful raid, aside from the bit where Tarrlok got punched in the face and ended up spitting blood everywhere.

The keys jangle satisfyingly against Korra's palm.

The clinic is tiny, and there isn't a receptionist in sight. However, it isn't long before a little old lady in a healer's robes ambles out one of the rooms. She smiles brightly when she sees Korra. "Oh!" she says. "Miss Avatar."

Korra bows deeply, grateful that someone's actually glad to see her. "Ma'am. I was told Councilman Tarrlok came here to get an injury treated?"

"He's in the back room," the healer says, pointing to a doorway. "He's still coming 'round, though."

"What do you mean?" Korra asks. Tarrlok was pretty awake when she saw him last. Angry, but awake.

"Don't worry, he'd just bit the inside of his cheek. All I needed to do was close the wound. It wasn't anything severe, just messy," the healer says. "I only gave him a sedative because he was a little... agitated."

Agitated? Well, that figures. Korra grips the keys. Right, might as well get this over with. "Okay. I'll go speak to him. Thanks, ma'am."

The healer offers a small bow. Korra heads into the room where Tarrlok is waiting.

\---

The examination room contains a chair, a cupboard, and an bench with a Councilman on it.

Tarrlok is lying flat on the bench, hands resting on his chest, fingers laced together. He looks half asleep, half thoughtful. There's a lot of blood around the collar of his uniform - still damp, from the looks of it - though fortunately his face has been cleaned up. His armor is piled in a corner.

Korra was lucky enough to witness him getting smacked in the face firsthand.

It was meant to be a routine raid on a bookshop (and it occurs to her that thinking of a raid as 'routine' is a kind of weird), and everything had been going to plan. The shop's owner had quietly surrendered; it hadn't taken long for the Task Force to find the printing press hidden in the basement. But then Tarrlok had been climbing the stairs back up to the ground floor, and some guy (who was probably Korra's age) had stepped out from behind the door frame at the top of the stairs and yelled 'FUCK THE GOVERNMENT'.

And he'd socked Tarrlok in the mouth.

Korra had been standing a step behind. She'd jumped back and put her arms against Tarrlok's shoulders to stop him from stumbling into her and knocking them both down the stairs.

Credit to the Equalist, it was a pretty good punch.

Of course Tarrlok didn't exactly appreciate the guy's technique. Korra remembers the following: Tarrlok lunging, a sudden drop in temperature, the rush of water. A second later, the Equalist was frozen to the opposite wall.

Korra had to grab Tarrlok's arm to stop him from... doing something that was really unnecessary.

Tarrlok had shoved her away with enough force to make her stagger back, and then he'd thrown a massive snitfit at his second-in-command about how the bookshop was meant to be secure. Or that's what Korra assumed he was shouting about, anyway. He wasn't speaking too clearly by that point. The second-in-command could've used an umbrella to protect himself from blood and spittle.

Tarrlok had then spent the rest of the night with a handkerchief over his mouth, talking in monosyllables. Maybe he'd dropped the keys when he'd dug the handkerchief out from under his armor. He'd skipped the night's debriefing, leaving that to his second-in-command (who probably wouldn't be second-in-command for much longer), and had got one of the drivers to take him to the nearest clinic.

(Korra had offered to take a look at his injury, but he'd shooed her away. Apparently he didn't think she was competent enough to deal with a basic cut. Big surprise.)

And, of course, Korra had been the poor sap who'd found his keys lying on the street.

Korra stands in the doorway of the examination room. "Hey," she says, holding the keys up. "I think you dropped these?"

Tarrlok turns his head in her direction, but doesn't quite look *at* her. His left cheek is swollen, and he has a strand of hair stuck in the corner of his mouth.

Korra would like to pretend that she doesn't really, really want to snicker right now.

Tarrlok makes an effort to sit up, slowly propping himself up on his elbows. He looks pleasantly surprised.

"Good morning," he says.

"Um..." says Korra. There is no such thing as a good morning.

Tarrlok smiles. If you squinted really hard, you could almost mistake him for a nice person. "And what's your name, young lady?"

Korra looks over her shoulder. Is he talking to her? Looks that way. "Uh. Korra."

She has no idea why she just answered his question. Older men who call her 'young lady' in *that* tone of voice don't deserve a polite response.

Tarrlok's smile broadens into one of those fake grins that he uses whenever he thinks he's being charming, though the grin is looking pretty lopsided right now. "I'm Councilman Tarrlok, chairman of the Republic City Council of Republic City."

"I know who you are," says Korra.

Tarrlok's smugness intensifies by 200%. "Yes, you must have heard of me."

"Yeah..." Korra says, and now looks over her should to see if the healer is still around. Tarrlok is weirding her out. More so than usual. "...because we work together."

"Oh," says Tarrlok, and pauses. "...Really?!" He sounds way too chipper about that.

"You feeling okay?" Korra asks.

"Never better," Tarrlok says. "So, what do you do for a living?"

Is he just running through a little script he uses whenever he needs to pretend he cares about people? Korra carefully ventures closer, and tells him, "I'm the Avatar." She points at herself. "Ava. Tar."

Tarrlok's smile freezes, and Korra reads confusion - and maybe panic - in his eyes. "Ah."

"Don't tell me, you were expecting someone taller," Korra grumbles. For the heck of it, she asks, "Hey, what's the date today?"

Tarrlok ponders this deeply, then answers, "Yes."

Yep, he's completely out of it.

Her first thought is: this is amazing. I wish I had a camera.

Then her conscience has to rears its ugly head and ruin things by saying: no, he's injured. If he wasn't in lala land right now, he probably wouldn't want you to see him like this.

Does he have anyone who can come check on him? A relative, a girlfriend, an ex-wife, maybe a string of ex-wives? Korra realizes that she doesn't know much about the guy.

"Is there anyone I can contact who can come fetch you?" Korra asks. Someone should be keeping an eye on him, though she's not going to be the one to do it.

"Mmm," Tarrlok says, and fixes her with a stare that manages to be creepy on multiple levels. "No."

"Well, do you want anything?" Korra says. "Like a cup of water?" Or a good slap?

Actually, under the current circumstances, she could probably get away with grabbing Tarrlok by the lapels and shaking him while yelling 'GET AHOLD OF YOURSELF, MAN'. The temptation is there.

"Do I know you?" Tarrlok asks. "You look very familiar."

"I just told you who I was."

"Oh, *right*," Tarrlok says, as if she's talking garbage and he's humoring her.

Korra points to herself again. "I'm Korra. The Avatar. Avatar Korra."

Tarrlok seems skeptical. "Hm."

This shouldn't bother her, yet it does.

Korra inches even closer to the bench, and tells him, "You're just confused. But this'll all pass and you'll go back to normal soon."

"Has anyone ever told you that you have a very elegant..." Tarrlok begins, then looks a little lost. "...Thing?"

Augh. No. "Okay, buddy," Korra says, very slowly. "You should stop talking now."

Tarrlok frowns. "Wait. How old did you say you were?"

"*Twelve*," Korra says, and cracks her knuckles.

Tarrlok flops back down on the bench and goes back to looking at the ceiling.

Korra tosses the keys up and down in her hand. She sighs, then holds the keys out to him. "I came here to give you these. They're yours, right?"

Tarrlok doesn't look at them. "Where am I?"

"In a clinic on Trishula Street, because an Equalist hit you in the face and you bit the inside of your your mouth."

Tarrlok's eyes focus slightly. "Did anyone see me get hit in the face?"

"Kinda." Only probably the entire Task Force. Even if they didn't see the punch, they definitely saw that tantrum that followed. There were probably people in the street who heard all that.

"Please tell me they didn't."

"They did," Korra says, with just a tiny amount of malicious glee that makes her wonder whose side she's really on. She adds, as an afterthought, "Sorry."

"Balls," Tarrlok declares, which is the sort of word that Korra would normally only expect to hear from him if, say, he was discussing sports. He manages to sit up properly. "Well, I'm going home."

He then stands like the world's ugliest baby caribou learning to walk for the first time.

Okay, Korra thinks, if he tries to walk, and he falls on me, I'm going to sidestep him so he hits the ground.

But Tarrlok just eyes the floor tiles and sits back down as if he's changed his mind.

"I'd really like to go home now, if you don't mind," Tarrlok says, like that's her problem.

For just a split second, Korra actually considers carrying him to a taxi, and then she has to tell herself, *No.* "You just have to wait for the sedatives to wear off. That's all."

Tarrlok actually looks sad - like, genuinely sad - and Korra almost steps backwards, surprised by the fact that he's capable of emotions other than 'smugness' and 'spite'

"You'll be fine. Honest," Korra mutters. She doesn't know why she's trying to reassure him. He probably won't remember any of this. Or he'll pretend that he doesn't remember, anyway. She squints at him. He still has some hair stuck in his mouth.

"Um..." Korra points to her the right corner of her own mouth, to give him a hint.

Tarrlok squints right back at her.

Korra points again.

"I don't quite follow," Tarrlok says. "Do you want me to kiss you?"

"NO," Korra bellows, making the floor shake very slightly. She might've gone into 1/10000th of the Avatar State just then. "...No. *No.* I'm trying to tell you that you have a hair in your mouth."

"Oh," says Tarrlok, and paws at the wrong side of his face.

Korra groans. She reaches over and pushes the hair away, then quickly wipes her hand on her the leg of her pants.

"Thank you," Tarrlok says, very quietly.

"Okay!" Korra says. The word just bursts out of her: OKAY! Like RIGHT! FINE! I'M DONE HERE. She's worried that if she sticks around, he's going to imprint on her like a baby turtleduck. "I brought you your keys. I'd better get going now. People will be wondering where I am."

"WAIT," Tarrlok orders. For all his flaws, he's clearly had practice at bossing people around, because the command bypasses Korra's common sense and she instinctively freezes.

Tarrlok then says, "I have to tell you something."

He takes a deep breath, meets her gaze, and holds up his index finger. He wears the expression of a man about to deliver a speech at a funeral, possibly his own.

Korra waits.

Tarrlok issues the following proclamation: "My tongue feels extremely strange. And..."

Korra still waits.

"I hate this," Tarrlok says.

"That's it?" Korra says. "That's what you wanted to tell me?"

Tarrlok adds, "Everything is *horrible*."

If he can complain, then that means he's okay. "Yeah, okay. I'll see you tomorrow. I'm going," Korra says, and turns her back on him.

"I'm chairman of the Republic City Council," Tarrlok says, indignant.

"Going," says Korra, without looking back.

"You have split ends and you DRESS like a BOY," Tarrlok tells her.

"Bye Tarrlok," Korra says, slipping out of the room and quickly closing the door.

\---

It's only when she's out in the clinic's foyer that she realizes she's *still holding his stupid keys*, but there's no way she's going back to him now.

She emits a very small howl of rage but manages to avoid setting anything on fire.

After counting to ten and composing herself, she sullenly inspects the ends of her hair.

\---

As soon as she's back on Air Temple Island, she asks a White Lotus guard to take the keys to Tarrlok's housekeeper.

She then forgets about Tarrlok, and enjoys a deep, dreamless sleep until Meelo decides that her bed should be a trampoline.

\---

In the evening, Korra drags herself back to the police HQ. The Task Force have a meeting scheduled. She isn't sure why she has to attend. It's not like Tarrlok actually values her input. He probably sees her as a mascot.

The Task Force has their own conference room that Tarrlok has 'borrowed'. It's a pretty nice room, too, with a high ceiling and lots of windows; very different from the dark offices on the floors below. There's even a pot of tea and some relatively fresh sou on a table by the door. Korra takes four of the sou.

She takes a spot at the back of the room, and eats the sou while Tarrlok talks about... things. She wonders what the Equalist who socked him in the face is up to right now. She's tempted to give the Equalist some of the sou, but he'd probably just yell things at her.

Tarrlok's speech is back to normal, and the swelling is barely visible anymore. Still, he seems kind of snippy, and Korra gets the sense that he's watching everyone closely. You could almost say that he's not his usual self, but Korra gets the impression that this *is* his usual self and he's just decided to take a break from trying to seem friendly.

When he's done speaking, and everyone else is shuffling out of the room, Korra helps herself to any pastries that're left over (they'll get thrown away if no one eats them, because people here are weird like that). Then she approaches Tarrlok.

"You got your keys, right?" she asks.

He flicks through a sheaf of notes in his hands, and doesn't look up. "Yes. Thank you."

"How's the face?"

"Fine."

Korra considers cramming an entire sou in her mouth and trying to talk around it, because that's bound to annoy him, and he probably thinks she's an idiot already anyway. But instead, she makes herself smile, and offers, "I once got hit in the face with an Earth coin while training. All the White Lotus elders saw it. It really hurt." (She neglects to mention the bit about how she'd curled up on the floor and sobbed from pain.)

Tarrlok glances up just long enough to give her a 'why are you telling me this you stupid girl' kind of look. "Oh," he says, and goes back to his notes.

And, great. She's not sure what kind of reaction she'd expected just then.

"Okay," she mutters, and turns away. She's got better things to do than hang around here. "See you 'round, Councilman Tarrlok of the Republic City Council of Republic City."

She's two steps away from the door when she hears Tarrlok say, "Wait. What?"

There is a note of terrible realization in his voice.

Korra smirks, and keeps walking.


End file.
